The Rise Of Majick

Tarver longs for the world from Before, our world. To restore all he has lost, he agrees to retrieve the first dragon egg of the new Age and return it to Sylth, the Tar Dragon.Unfortunately, the elves living in Central Park plan to use the egg to conquer this new land of a destroyed cities and dead technologies. Their old spells are failing and the dragon within the egg is their last hope. More

Tarver longs for the technology and security from Before, from our world. In order to restore all he has lost, he agrees to retrieve the first dragon egg of the new Age and return it to Sylth, the Tar Dragon.Unfortunately, the elves living in Central Park plan to use the egg to conquer this new land of a destroyed cities and dead technologies. Their old spells are failing and their once immortal King is dying. The dragon within the egg is their last hope.Aided by train-riding dwarfs, mythical creatures and some unlikely allies, Tarver ventures across a land both familiar and frightening. The future is unwritten and the victors will inherit a world unlike any that has ever existed before.

Jay Taylor grew up in rural Southern Illinois. He was encouraged to be creative by his mother, Sherry, who had her own art studio and taught various art classes. His father, Donald, taught him the value of hard work and independence by being an example as a business owner and a coal miner.Throughout his childhood and into his adult life he has created stories, worlds and characters that others enjoyed. Whether it was leading a role playing game or scratching down a short story, he always found a way to let others share the worlds he imagined.He is the proud father of three children and the fortunate husband of Kimberly. He currently lives in Northern California.

Reviews

Review by:
Dionne Lister
on June 04, 2012 :
When I started reading this story and saw that elves inhabited the pages, I thought it would be another same old, same old, fantasy novel. However, the author has melded traditional scenarios with a modern-day, post apocalyptic setting, which I thought was original and a good premise for a story. The characters took a while to grow on me, but they did, and having reached the end of this first book in the series, I would like to know what is in their future.

The plot is well done and the many threads the author has laid out are brought together in a believable way at the end. I have only one criticism; there are moments where the writing flows well and I forget I am reading, but then the lack of editing leaps out at me. I was disappointed because it did affect my enjoyment of the book. I’ve mentioned this because I think the book is worthy of editing and with such an original premise, and diverse characters, it has the potential to become an enjoyable series. Having said that, I invested time getting to know the characters and I will be reading the next book when it comes out because I want to know what happens next and when the author gets it right, his writing is enjoyable to read.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by:
jane anne
on April 04, 2012 :
The rise of Majick by Jay Taylor

3*

Amazon description:-…
‘Tarver wants to restore the world of his youth - Our world. His hopes could be crushed by the elves living in Central Park. The future depends on the liquid majick and the first dragon egg of this new Age. Whoever controls the majick and the dragon within the egg will be unstoppable. Our once great world is in transition. The future will be determined by a man and a few friends he gathers along the way’.

This is a fast paced adventure story based in a land full of magical beings, trolls demons, dragons and more. The story of destiny and bringing balance back to a conflicted world is not a unique idea and I have read a number of fantasy books with similar story lines where our hero’s journey is spent fighting a number of different evils to stand up for what they believe is right. Yes some of the creatures were new to me, as were most of the names and the spelling of ‘magic’…. same theme not so varied variation!

I have one major gripe that I may not have noticed if I had ‘read’ all this book but parts of it I ‘listened’ to using the speech enable function on my kindle, which I think highlighted the problem for me……… There was a section where ‘Hunt’ and ‘Barron’ were speaking with the Tar Dragon Slyth, at this point I was listening and the word ‘said’ popped up so often that it frustrated me. The odd alternative was used, ‘asked’ and ‘added’ for instance but it was already in my head and during the rest of the book I was distracted by counting the word ‘said’.

On the whole this is an ‘okay’ read it was interesting enough to entertain, but not original enough to be unpredictable. The writing style is comfortable but I did find parts of the plot quite chaotic and confusing. I didn’t find excessive formatting, punctuation or grammar errors but did feel the vocabulary was limited which I felt let the book down.